Conflict, disasters displaced some 80,000 people daily in 2017: report

Afghan children pose for photos at a displaced person camp in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Feb.19, 2018. The number of civilian casualties in conflict-hit Afghanistan documented by the UNAMA in 2017 reached more than 10,000. (Photo:Xinhua)

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A total of 30.6 million people were displaced within their own countries due to conflicts and disasters, the equivalent of more than 80,000 people each day, a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said on May 16.

According to the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018), new displacement due to conflict and violence reached 11.8 million in 2017, almost double the figure of 6.9 million in 2016. This brings the total number of people living in internal displacement due to conflict close to 40 million worldwide.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 5.5 million of these displacements, followed by the Middle East and North Africa with 4.5 million.

The report also shows that in 2017, disasters displaced 18.8 million people in 135 countries. Of these, 8.6 million displacements were triggered by floods, and 7.5 million by storms, especially tropical cyclones.

IDMC is the leading source of information and analysis on internal displacement globally. It is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent, non-governmental humanitarian organization.

IDMC was set up in 1998 at the request of the international community to fill an important knowledge gap on the global scale and patterns of internal displacement.